


a true friend helps you move the body

by KiaraSayre



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Childhood Friends, Cruise Ships, Marriage, SPACE Cruise Ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:09:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13052799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiaraSayre/pseuds/KiaraSayre
Summary: A cruise, a honeymoon, a Honey, some moons.  Juno should've stayed on Mars.





	a true friend helps you move the body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anticyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide for anti_cyclone - I hope you enjoy it!

**18:44 M.O.S.T. (Martian Orbital Standard Time)**

Five o'clock in the morning in Hyperion City translated to six in the evening in Orbital time, just one of the many, many reasons that Juno had dug in his heels and refused to leave the planet for thirty-eight years. So of course it was Mick, Mick _Fucking_ Mercury, who managed to drag him to a place where the only thing between him and a long, long, _long_ fall was some flimsy ferroconcrete and a pilot who hopefully knew what they were doing.

The Martian Space Vessel _Sospita_ was the crown jewel of Hermes Orbital Cruise Inc.'s fleet of posh and pointless cruise ships, and when Juno had received word that he'd been gifted a ticket for a meteor-spotting trip circling Deimos he'd thought it was a trap. Then he'd heard where the ticket had come from and had thought it was a _mistake_. He didn't expect to even be let onto the shuttle, let alone - 

"Jay-jay!"

At least Mick had the decency to meet him. Juno spotted him from across the docking concourse as soon as he stepped off the orbital shuttle - Mick wasn't exactly small, and the jumping up and down made him even more conspicuous than usual. That, plus the fact that he wore the same grubby coat he'd been wearing for years and paid no attention to the way his dreadlocks slapped the passers-by in the face.

Between the shuttle ride, which was supposed to be "overnight" but lasted all of three hours, and the knowledge that currently instead of standing on soil he was falling very rapidly _towards_ soil from a great height, and on _top_ of all that the tasteful old-timey Earth ballad singing about the fabled land of Alabama just loud enough for the lyrics to distract, Juno wasn't feeling particularly generous. He trudged towards Mick and, as soon as he was close enough, shoved his duffel into Mick's chest as hard as he could.

Which, after a night of no sleep and lots of completely dignified shrieking of "Are we _sure_ we're going up?!", was not particularly hard.

"Congratulations, Mercury, you got me off the ground, but how the hell did you get actual tickets? I was half-expecting someone to break my kneecaps for a debt of yours when I showed up where they told me to."

Mick pulled Juno into a big bear hug, aggressively affectionate even for him. "I'm so glad you're here, buddy."

Juno pushed him away. "Seriously, though, did one of your get-rich-quick schemes actually work, or - no, wait, literally _any_ other explanation makes more sense than that."

"Oh, that's easy," Mick said, beaming. "My wife paid for them."

"Your - what."

"She didn't want to deal with the crowd, so we'll go meet up with her in a few - oh, hey, there's Sasha!"

" _Sasha_?" Juno turned around and, sure enough, there stood Sasha Wire. She was even in civilian clothing instead of her Dark Matters uniform, although Juno spotted the straight hem of body armor underneath her silk shirt - subtle enough to be high-quality, but that was Sasha.

"Mick, it's so great to see you." Sasha brushed right past Juno and reached up for a hug, which Mick enthusiastically provided. When they separated, she said, her voice free of inflection, "And I see you're here, too, Juno."

"Mick didn't tell me you were coming," Juno said.

"He didn't tell me _you_ were coming, either, but I figured that out on the shuttle." Sasha looked pointedly at Mick.

"We weren't on the same shuttle," Juno protested.

Sasha rolled her eyes. "Oh, we were. You just probably didn't notice with the tantrum you were throwing."

"It wasn't a tantrum! If humans were supposed to fly, some corporation would've figured out how to genetically modify us and give us wings by now!"

"If you don't want to fly, here's a word of advice: _don't get onto an orbital shuttle_. Like Dark Matters always says, don't walk into a situation if you aren't aware of all the possible variables."

Juno narrowed his eyes. "So did Mick tell you about his wife, or was I the only one it was a surprise for?"

Sasha blinked, her eyes flicking to Juno and then back to Mick, her nostrils giving an appalled flare. It brought a warm, fuzzy feeling to Juno's heart to see one pulled over on her, too - for Sasha, that was practically falling over in shock.

"Mick," she said, resignation and mounting dread rising in her voice, "tell me you didn't..."

Mick spread his arms out wide and grinned. "Welcome to my honeymoon, you guys!"

**19:03 M.O.S.T.**

Her name was Honey; she was a respectable businesswoman who ran an identity impersonation service for the richest of the rich in Hyperion City, setting up decoys for paparazzi drones and creating fake data uplink histories; she'd met Mick at the office of Three-Eyed Jasmine, Old Town's most beloved and vicious loan shark, where Mick had been begging for mercy and probably also another loan to start up his damn calendar business; and for some reason, she'd suggested they get married immediately.

"And then," Mick continued, shepherding Juno and Sasha through to the bar (or, rather, the Light Refreshments Concourse), "she took out a massive life insurance policy on me and brought me here!"

Sasha and Juno stopped dead in perfect synchronicity.

They also spoke in unison: "She _what_?"

"Yeah, have you heard about this life insurance thing?" Mick continued obliviously. "They give her a bunch of money for every day that I'm alive, and once I die, she sells all my stuff and uses that to pay them back! Isn't that a great hey why did you guys stop walking?"

Juno glanced at Sasha. Sasha was already looking at him. They shared a look that they hadn't shared in years, maybe even a decade: a look that said, more eloquently than any words could, that they didn't understand how Mick had survived this long in the universe without constant direct supervision.

"Mick, you idiot," Juno said with a sigh.

Sasha said, "That's not how - "

"Oh, here she is now!" Mick started waving again the way he had for Juno, and across the crowd of vacationers a woman waved back. She was average height, with nondescript freckles on a skintone that was likely the mathematical average of human skintones. Her nose was too prominent to be a button but too small to be hooked, and had just enough of a diagonal to it to keep her from being classically beautiful; her figure was similarly suspended between skinny and plump. The plain soft blue of her sweater matched the blue-gray of her hair, the favored shade of high fashion two years ago and currently ubiquitous.

Everything about her was so perfectly calculated to be forgettable and overlooked that the hairs on the back of Juno's neck immediately stood on end.

"Honey!" Mick called. "Honey, over here! Here they are!"

Even Honey's smile was middle of the road: just enough teeth to be a smile but not so much as to be off-putting. It even reached her eyes, which meant that she was either very good at what she did or she was genuinely happy to see them.

Juno had his guess about which one it was.

"It's so wonderful to meet you both!" she exclaimed, tucking herself under Mick's arm. Mick happily rested his hand on her opposite shoulder, beaming with pride. "Bartholomew's told me so much about you."

"Nobody calls him that," Sasha said stiffly.

"Yeah, 'Bartholomew' is a name for adults who can actually take care of themselves for _two seconds_." Juno glared at Mick.

Honey blinked, but Mick just laughed.

"That's what I said! But Honey told me that it was a _distinguished_ name and that I deserved to feel both distinct and guished."

"So you..." Honey hesitated for a moment, gesturing towards Juno and Sasha with the martini glass she held in her hand. "Bartholomew said you all grew up in Old Town together...?"

"That's right!" Mick said. "I was the King of the Freeway in those days, y'know. These two would hang on every word while I told them stories - "

"I still don't understand why you didn't just take that hoverbike," Honey said, shaking her head fondly.

"The city was just so...so big!" said Mick.

"So's space, but..." Honey gestured around. "Here you are!"

"Yeah," Mick said, consideration turning to excitement on his face. "Yeah, I am!"

Honey turned back to Sasha and Juno, still smiling. "And what do you do now?" 

"I'm former HPCD, but now I'm a PI," said Juno. "Still have the best shot in Hyperion City, though, especially with this." He tapped his cheekbone just below the Theia Spectrum. "I lost that eye a while back on a case - can't really share the details, but it involved a smuggling ring of Martian artifacts, a bunch of murders, and a bomb that just about destroyed all the life on the planet."

"I'm in Dark Matters," Sasha said, and gave Honey a razor of a smile. "I'd tell you more about my position, but then I'd have to kill you and electromagnetically wipe any remaining electrical impulses from your cranium, and there's just not the equipment for that up here and getting bodies through customs is such a hassle."

Honey's face shifted, the smile remaining on her lips even as it left her eyes, chased away by terror and dismay.

"That's...so nice," she said in a slightly strangled voice. "I had no idea that Mick's friends were so...in law enforcement."

"Aren't they great?" Mick said. "I've got the coolest friends."

"You sure do, Mick," Juno agreed and smiled blandly. "And now you've got a wife, too. How about that."

"Yeah!" Mick pulled Honey in for a sideways hug. "When Honey and I got married two days ago, I was so bummed that there wasn't enough notice for you guys to make it, but when I kept talking about how sad I was, Honey suggested that you come along on the honeymoon and I thought, great!"

"A honeymoon at interplanetary altitudes," Sasha noted.

"Out of the jurisdiction of Martian authorities - but _within_ the jurisdiction of liability for Hermes Orbital Cruises' guest agreements, didn't I read that, Sasha?"

"You sure did, Juno. That compensation package listed in those forms we had to sign to get on the shuttle looked pretty impressive."

"Well, yeah, but that's just if something bad happens." Mick's attention shifted to somewhere behind Juno. "Oh man, are those crude eats? I've always wanted to try crude eats."

"They're called _crudités_ , Mick," Sasha said.

"Let's go grab some before the waiters disappear," Honey said quickly, grabbing Mick's arm and pulling him past Juno and Sasha, who stood in silence for a moment.

"So we're on the same page about all this, right?" Juno finally asked.

Sasha looked sideways at Juno. "You mean that Honey's a con who's going to murder Mick for the insurance money?"

"Yep, that's the one."

Sasha glanced in the direction Mick and Honey had gone off in. "At least it's not that damn calendar again."

**20:52 M.O.S.T.**

The first time Sasha and Juno managed to corner Mick without his new wife, who had been sticking to him all night like - well, like the obvious pun - was after a few hours of opulence the likes of which Juno hadn't seen since Ingrid Lake's party. There had been crudités, and then drinks on the Interior Vista Concourse, and then a meteor sighting gathering on the Exterior Vista Concourse, and then a dinner so fancy that the robotic manservant that had been provided in Juno's room hadn't allowed him to leave said room until Juno put on the provided formalwear. So when Juno and Sasha managed to catch Mick alone, when Honey finally gave in to base human bodily needs and had to use the bathroom, he wore a shimmery, gauzy shift dress in a lovely shade of lavender that looked fucking amazing but left him nowhere to hide his damn gun.

He chose not to worry about it; Sasha probably had enough weaponry tucked into her floor-length, thick-knight, long-sleeved formal dress to successfully stage a coup on any planet in the solar system.

And besides, his legs and shoulders looked _amazing_.

But the second Honey was out of earshot, Mick leaned over the table that they all shared on the Postprandial Cheese Concourse and said, "Isn't she _amazing_?"

"Mick - " Juno said.

"When I was at Three-Eyed Jasmine's and I saw her I thought, _wow, there's someone who's way out of my league_ , but then she smiled at me and came over to me and - "

"I know things have been difficult since you and Kentigern broke up, Mick, but - " tried Sasha.

Juno nearly spilled his drink. "Wait, you and Kentigern? As in Kentigern MacJoshi? Since when were you two - "

"Don't get us off topic just because you're incapable of picking up your comms to chat with old friends," Sasha snapped.

"Oh, that's rich, given the silent treatment you gave me for how long was it? Oh yeah, a _decade_ \- "

"As talented as you are at redirecting the conversation to be about yourself, we're here for _Mick_."

"Guys, I think I love her," Mick blurted out, and both Sasha and Juno stared at him. "She's just - she listens to me when I talk and doesn't laugh at my calendar and - I know how this sounds but she doesn't know the _old_ Mick, you know?"

"You're forty," Juno said flatly. "You _are_ old, Mick."

"I just mean that she's not from Old Town. She doesn't have years and years of stories about me doing perfectly reasonable stuff that turned out to not work out - "

Juno snorted. "Those are called 'poor decisions.'"

"You know how much I hate to agree with Juno, Mick, but..." Sasha shrugged. "How long has it been since you've met her?"

"Three days, but - "

"And you've been married for how many of those?"

"Two, but - "

"I'd make a joke about how after three days of knowing each other you should just go ahead and get married, but oh wait - "

"Juno," Sasha said sharply.

"Oh, come _on_ , Sasha, we both know that - "

"I'm in love with her," Mick said again, loud enough to shut Juno and Sasha up. "She makes me feel like...like I can be anyone I want to be. Like I don't have to be dumb, cowardly Mick Mercury, you know?"

"She keeps getting your name wrong. That's not the same thing."

" _Juno_ ," Sasha said again, this time accompanying it with a glare.

"Am I wrong?"

"No, but you're being a jerk." Sasha turned to Mick. "You know we just want you to be happy, right?"

Mick broke into a relieved smile. "I know. I know how protective you guys get. That's why I never told you about Kentigern, Jay. I know how much you don't like the guy."

Juno bit back the words 'the kind of scum that makes other scum feel like good people.'

"And I _am_ happy, Sasha. I'm happier than I've been in a long time, and you know how down I usually get this time of year."

Sasha closed her eyes briefly. "It's May, Mick."

"No it's not, but your crappy calendar is beside the point," Mick said, and reached over the table to put a hand on each of Juno and Sasha's shoulders. "I'm just...really happy, and I'm really glad you're here to be happy with me." 

Juno swallowed hard. No matter how many times he thought he was immune to Mick Mercury's charms...

"I'm glad, too," Sasha said quietly.

"Yeah," Juno murmured.

"Great," Mick said, and squeezed their shoulders. "Because I think I see some cheese over there that _doesn't_ have pincers and that's just too weird not to go and eat all of it, right?"

Once Mick was gone, Juno said, "This is worse than I thought."

"We need a plan."

**24:11 M.O.S.T.**

The plan ended up being ridiculously simple: Juno bribed a seven-year-old guest in the Dessert Concourse (a word which Juno was beginning to develop an instant rage response to seeing) to trip Mick and shove him into the hovering scale cake models of Mars and its moons hanging in the middle of the concourse. Deimos had already been cut into, but a good three-quarters of it was still there, its weird triangular shape mangled. But the seven-year-old was talented and managed to get the angle just right: Mick didn't just fall into Deimos, but drove Deimos into Mars, splattering red velvet and ice cream ice caps all over the floor.

Sure enough, the robotic serving staff mercilessly escorted him to freshen up, and when Honey took a step to follow, Sasha's arm snapped out and grasped hers like a vice.

"Don't worry, Honey," she said, "we'll look after you while your new husband gets cleaned up."

"Yeah, after all, we should get to know each other," Juno said. "After all, we're practically family."

"Aw, thanks, guys!" Mick said, although through the cake smeared from his hairline to his waist it just came out as muffled spluttering.

"So, _Honey_ ," Sasha said, not letting go of her arm. "Tell us _everything_ about yourself. Where are you from? How's the identity impersonation business these days? What's your maiden name?"

"Uh," Honey said. "Um, it's - Potts."

Juno slapped the sideboard they stood next to. "Oh, _come on_! Are you serious? Your name is _honeypot_?"

" _Potts_ ," Honey said, halfheartedly trying to pull her arm from Sasha's grip. It didn't work. "My parents have an odd sense of - "

"Don't even bother," Sasha said. "We know you're planning to kill Mick to collect the insurance money. How were you going to do it, huh?"

Honey looked from Sasha to Juno, and then sighed. The tension leaked out of her, replaced by resignation. "I don't do that part," she said. "I'm just the bait."

"So this was, what, a group effort?" Juno said.

Honey shrugged one shoulder. "This isn't exactly what I wanted to do for a living when I was a kid, okay?"

"Let me guess: you got into debt, fell in with the wrong crowd, and next thing you knew you were marrying people and luring them to their deaths?" Juno said.

"No," Honey said. "My ex-wife did. But when she got complacent, decided she liked me too much, her employers killed her instead - and her debts transferred to me." She gestured helplessly around her. "And now here I am."

"Huh," Sasha said, a calculating look in her eye.

"Don't fall for it, Sasha - everyone's got a sob story these days."

"What's your real name?" Sasha demanded, her attention stubbornly on Honey.

Honey winced. "It's...Retrograde. I know, I know. Just call me Deedee. Deedee Safavi."

"Honey it is," Juno said. "Hey Sasha, you know what I think would be in the interests of that greater good you love so much?"

"Taking down a ring of blackmailing murderers and fraudsters, retaining one of their victims and former members as a witness in protective custody, and getting off this damn ship as soon as possible?" Sasha said, a comms unit already at the ready. "Why is everything a 'concourse,' anyway? Just say 'room!'"

Juno was suddenly reminded why he and Sasha had been friends for so long - and that between the three of them, Sasha had always been the brains. "I mean, yeah, but - hang on, just a second. I think we need a condition or two before we make any deals."

Sasha stopped with her thumb over the call button. "Oh?"

"Condition one," Juno said, looking at Honey. "Answer some questions, and answer honestly. Why Mick?"

Honey sighed. "He was...there. And he agreed to the life insurance thing faster than anyone else I'd dealt with before. And..." She shrugged, a slight hint of a smile coming to the corners of her eyes. "He was nice. A lot of the marks are criminals, but Mick was different."

Sasha snorted. "Clearly there's a lot of stories he hasn't told you."

This time Honey's sigh was almost wistful. "He has so many stories. And he may have committed crimes, but he's not a criminal - not like some of the other marks I've dealt with. He doesn't look at people and see things, or, or...resources. He just sees people." She took a deep breath. "Are you going to tell him?"

"Yes," Sasha said at the same time that Juno said, " _Yeah_ , obviously."

"Oh," Honey said.

"Second question," Juno said, watching her reaction closely. "Do you like him?"

"I've only known him for three days!" Honey protested, but a blush coalesced beneath her freckles.

"Okay then," Juno said. "Two final conditions. I want you to be the one to tell him."

"What?" said Honey, startled.

"And lastly - take tonight and just go on a date with him or something. Watch a stream together, go view some meteors, go climb that glacier they put in the middle of the Adventure Concourse, I don't care. Just go on a date and know that I'm watching the whole time and the _second_ I see anything that looks remotely murder-y, the deal is off."

"And we kill you," Sasha added.

"And we kill you," Juno agreed. "And Sasha does that brain-thing that sounded really creepy."

"Your condition is that I date your friend?" Honey said, frowning.

"That you give him a chance," Juno corrected. "If he agrees, _after_ you've told him about the whole planning-to-be-an-accomplice-in-his-murder thing."

Honey stared at them. "You're really good friends," she said eventually.

"To Mick? Absolutely," Sasha said coolly. "He deserves it."

"He's lucky to have you," Honey said quietly.

"No," Juno said. "We're lucky to have him. And if you tell him I said that, Sasha will be the least of your problems."

**02:22 M.O.S.T.**

"I have to admit," Juno said, watching Mick and Honey attempt to learn the ancient steps of a dance called the Cupid Shuffle in the Ballroom Concourse, "Mick looks happy."

"Yeah," Sasha agreed, sipping a Ring of Saturn - her third of the night, leaving her fractionally relaxed. "I'm happy for him."

"She's not nearly good enough for him, obviously," Juno said.

"Oh, of course not." Sasha tilted her head, observing Mick step to the wrong left for the third consecutive time as Honey tugged him in the correct direction, laughing. "But maybe that's okay."

Juno hummed noncommittally into his whiskey.

"And if they do keep dating while she's in protective custody, I plan to personally chaperone every moment," Sasha added.

"And there it is," said Juno. "He took the whole murder thing really well."

"Twenty creds says he opens up his version of a life insurance company by the end of the month."

"Oh, you mean Month Twenty-Six?"

" _Mick_ ," Sasha said, the name filled to the brim with exasperation and affection. She used to say Juno's name like that, too, he remembered.

And maybe it was all the whiskey, or the way that this vacation had ended up a case and had somehow not ended horrifically (well, yet - with Mick Mercury there was always times for things to go horribly south), or the way that sitting next to Sasha and drinking lazily and watching Mick and Honey dance had distracted him from the way his dislike of heights had increased proportional to his altitude, even in orbit, but - Juno actually felt pretty okay.

Maybe even more than okay.

"This has been nice," he said. "Hanging out. The three of us. Well, and Honey. And - just hanging out with you. Now."

Sasha took another sip of her Ring of Saturn, and then sighed. "Yeah, it has been. So don't ruin it by forcing the intervention about your narcissistic need to be the galaxy's biggest black hole of self-loathing, all right? Let's just enjoy it a little while longer."

Juno nodded. "Right. Yeah. Of course. Uh. How's the drink?"

"You know," Sasha said thoughtfully, looking into her glass, "after all these years, it's still my favorite."

"Yeah," Juno said, looking at her and then looking out at Mick, who had by now knocked over three other dancers, including Honey. "Funny how that happens."

"But nice."

"Yeah. But nice."


End file.
